Anti-Iran militants return home

Clutching flowers, chewing fingernails, and nervously holding their faces in their hands, 31 Iranian families awaited a reunion they thought would never come. They were reuniting with sons who had joined anti-Iran militants, officially tagged "terrorists" by both the US and Iran.

The journey of one of those sons, Hamid Khalkali, is typical: He went to Turkey five years ago for work, but ended up at a military training camp in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He was recruited by the Mujahideen-e Khalq, the "People's Holy Warriors," or MKO, Iran's largest opposition group, which aims to overthrow the government. It was supported for two decades by Mr. Hussein.

But now Mr. Khalkali is being officially welcomed home. He's one of more than 250 former combatants who have returned home since December - among the first to test Iran's offer of amnesty. Even as hawks in Washington debate tapping the group to help engineer regime change in Iran, a growing disillusionment within the MKO, coupled with a new Shiite- dominated government in Iraq that has little sympathy for it, has thinned the ranks of this once-feared militant group.

Hamid's mother, Mahin Amouie, thought her son was dead. But her grief turned to cautious joy last week when the telephone rang. Giving little information, the caller said: "We want to give you good news - come and get your son."

Until Ms. Amouie arrived at a small amphitheater in Tehran, bearing flowers and talking to other disbelieving families, she says she had no idea that Hamid had joined the MKO. Climbing onto the stage when her name was called, her emotional dam burst when Hamid strode into view. Tears streaming, Amouie collapsed into her son's arms, a scene repeated again and again.

"Oh Lord, I sacrifice myself for you!" Amouie sobbed to Hamid, crushing the armful of flowers as she wrapped herself tight around his neck. "Where have you been? Where have you been?"

While some hawks in Washington wanting to enlist their services, the MKO is designated a "terrorist" group by the US State Department, with some 3,500 members still in Iraq. Hussein used the group as footsoldiers in his war against Iran in the 1980s and later to help put down antiregime uprisings in Iraq. Quoting US government sources, Newsweek last month reported that the Bush administration is "seeking to cull useful [MKO] members as operatives for use against Tehran," to be trained as spies and sent back to Iran to gather intelligence. Currently, remaining members are under what the US calls "protective custody" at Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad.

Some 232 crossed from Iraq in two groups earlier this month, under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "For us, it's a humanitarian file. We do it for the families," says Loukas Petridis, a Red Cross spokesman in Tehran. "The message the Iranian authorities want to pass to Camp Ashraf is that more than 250 people have come back, and are free - and so far, that is how it has been." The Red Cross first received guarantees of safe treatment from Iran before agreeing to help.

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